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Yep, that was where I was going on the target devices for digital copies/downloads. And I agree that the quality can be upped by a DIY approach, but just as much as they might be "older" devices that don't lend themselves to streaming, they are more often 4" - 10" screens. And for them, can anyone see a difference between digital copy/download and the laboriously derived DIY re-encoded BD??

Jeff

If I have a few minutes I actually wanted to test this on my tablet/laptop to see if a PQ difference is even discernible.

If you know what you're doing, you can beat the quality (using same bitrate) by encoding from your own Bluray no problem.

Of course that's a very sweeping statement, im sure some providers are using very good encoders and settings.

Any major download or streaming service is encoding for speed, not quality. None of them have a care in the world about quality as their users don't care about quality. The majority of people who stream or download content (iTunes, Google Play) couldn't care less about picture quality. I actually can't think of anyone I know personally (outside of enthusiast friends) that watches movies/TV shows on anything other than their phone or tablet.

That being said; the default high profile in Handbrake will yield significantly higher quality than any streaming/download service.

Yep, that was where I was going on the target devices for digital copies/downloads. And I agree that the quality can be upped by a DIY approach, but just as much as they might be "older" devices that don't lend themselves to streaming, they are more often 4" - 10" screens. And for them, can anyone see a difference between digital copy/download and the laboriously derived DIY re-encoded BD??

Jeff

When I purchased my Nexus 10 it came with a free Google Play download for Transformers. There is a very clear difference between the Google Play version and a version I ripped. I used the Very Fast setting with constant quality of 20, Film Tune H.264 level 4.1 and DTS core. The conversion only took about 30 minutes. This conversion wouldn't be impressive on a big screen but it would still be better than Netflix. The Google Play version was about 4GB and mine was about 5.5GB. So the video portion was probably about the same size.

The Nexus 10 has pretty decent front facing speakers so the audio was a major difference. The Google Play version had horrific audio. This is especially apparent when using high quality headphones. The Nexus 10 also has a fantastic high resolution screen and the big difference is pixelation vs washed out color. During the high action sequences the Google Play version get's pixelated while my Handbrake version never pixelates but it does look a bit washed out especially in dark areas. The washed out color IMO is much more acceptable than pixelation.

iTunes and Vudu HDX might be the only two that have any consideration towards quality. But it's minimal at best and there is no balance. I would have to make an effort to encode something that looked and sounded as bad as an iTunes or Vudu HDX download. They are all for speed. Time spent converting/encoding/transcoding is money wasted.

And valuable experience it is! But you are here because you are cursed like most of us.

I am more cursed in that I do not stream and I simply do not watch movies on anything smaller than a 48" display with MOST of it being on a 120" front projection system, and never on a system without 5.1/7.1. If I need to kill time with my iPad or laptop, I surf tech websites, or just surf period, for entertainment. I will say that a big factor in my usage pattern is that I do not have kids who *will* and absolutely NEED TO watch movies on mobile devices.

iTunes and Vudu HDX might be the only two that have any consideration towards quality. But it's minimal at best and there is no balance. I would have to make an effort to encode something that looked and sounded as bad as an iTunes or Vudu HDX download. They are all for speed. Time spent converting/encoding/transcoding is money wasted.

The Xbox Live and Playstation network movie rentals also look very good.

This is what I find. Netflix will list shows/movies as 5.1 but you only get stereo. Add to that the poor qualitify of the video (movies made from Legos! Yay!) unless your bandwidth is perfect.

That being said, an infinite catalog is nice.

When I see this with Netflix it is with a TV show. The first season or two or three might be in stereo. But then the later seasons are in 5.1. So it's listed as having 5.1 even though the earlier seasons are only available in stereo.

I am more cursed in that I do not stream and I simply do not watch movies on anything smaller than a 48" display with MOST of it being on a 120" front projection system, and never on a system without 5.1/7.1.

I recognize there are many fans of Internet streaming -- I'm surprised at how enthusiastic the posters are in the new Amazon Fire-TV thread. I don't stream from the Internet. I have only a 2.8Mbps DSL line so when I tried Netflix the picture looked pretty unimpressive on a 50" plasma and audio was never better than 2.0. Playing a DVD of the TV series through my Oppo with 5.1 audio looked and sounded much better. Now I have a 65" plasma but still 2.8Mbps DSL so I suspect Internet streaming would look even worse.

- kelson h

The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of the low price is forgotten . . . life is too short to drink bad wine

And valuable experience it is! But you are here because you are cursed like most of us.

I am more cursed in that I do not stream and I simply do not watch movies on anything smaller than a 48" display with MOST of it being on a 120" front projection system, and never on a system without 5.1/7.1. If I need to kill time with my iPad or laptop, I surf tech websites, or just surf period, for entertainment. I will say that a big factor in my usage pattern is that I do not have kids who *will* and absolutely NEED TO watch movies on mobile devices.

Jeff

lol. That's a funny way of saying it.... "cursed". It's true though.... just because we want Blu-ray quality without the hassle of the disc we are indeed cursed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by artur9

This is what I find. Netflix will list shows/movies as 5.1 but you only get stereo. Add to that the poor qualitify of the video (movies made from Legos! Yay!) unless your bandwidth is perfect.

That being said, an infinite catalog is nice.

I've seen several movies on Netflix were the same signal is pushed out the fronts and surrounds... lol. It sounds ridiculous. Yeah at $8/month there is enough content were I just keep it. Documentaries, old TV shows.... things that typically have low AV quality anyway. If it were to go above $10 I'd get rid of it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaronwt

The Xbox Live and Playstation network movie rentals also look very good.

Last time I looked (a little over a year ago) the Playstation network movies/TV shows were all quite a bit more expensive than just buying the disc at Best Buy and they were huge files. 20+GB which you can't copy off of the PS3.... that all may have changed since then but at the time it certainly wasn't worth considering.

Why compress at all anyway? Hard drive space is pretty affordable, you can usually get down to <30GB if you keep the main title and core audio track.

Guess it depends for each person. Aside from cost, some people may not want to manage multiple harddrives. Some people may rely on streaming wireless at home which would definitely be more effective with compressed content. Some people will state they see no difference with their setup. Really to each their own. The only time I encode is when I want to create a mobile copy or for TV Shows.

iTunes and Vudu HDX might be the only two that have any consideration towards quality. But it's minimal at best and there is no balance. I would have to make an effort to encode something that looked and sounded as bad as an iTunes or Vudu HDX download. They are all for speed. Time spent converting/encoding/transcoding is money wasted.

No. Every major encoding suite has sliders or presets to balance encoding speed vs efficiency. I can assure you that none of the major players go for the fastest available. Neither do they go for absolute slowest preset. They choose something in between - which is exactly what balance means. It's about balacing encoding time (which costs money) with customer satisfaction (which potentially gains money).

If you would need to make an effort to do something worse than iTunes or Vudu then you don't know how to encode. A single-pass encode using x264 ultra-fast preset will look much, much worse bit-for-bit than what is provided by Netflix or Vudu. And that takes no effort.

Guess it depends for each person. Aside from cost, some people may not want to manage multiple harddrives. Some people may rely on streaming wireless at home which would definitely be more effective with compressed content. Some people will state they see no difference with their setup. Really to each their own. The only time I encode is when I want to create a mobile copy or for TV Shows.

What multiple harddrives? You left out a whole group of people that feel the need to archive only a few movies and TV they have already seen when there are so many they have never seen to watch.

No. Every major encoding suite has sliders or presets to balance encoding speed vs efficiency. I can assure you that none of the major players go for the fastest available. Neither do they go for absolute slowest preset. They choose something in between - which is exactly what balance means. It's about balacing encoding time (which costs money) with customer satisfaction (which potentially gains money).

If you would need to make an effort to do something worse than iTunes or Vudu then you don't know how to encode. A single-pass encode using x264 ultra-fast preset will look much, much worse bit-for-bit than what is provided by Netflix or Vudu. And that takes no effort.

I have 20 hard drives in my server. Depending on the size of your collection you will need multiple hard drives if you archive everything.

I wish I only had twenty. I'm at something like 65 drives in my three unRAID setups. Two of them are maxed out for drives. Luckily there is very little maintenance with unRAID so i don't have to do much except turn them on when I want to use them.

I wish I only had twenty. I'm at something like 65 drives in my three unRAID setups. Two of them are maxed out for drives. Luckily there is very little maintenance with unRAID so i don't have to do much except turn them on when I want to use them.

lol, you could bonk GaryJ on the head with a few and still have enough!

For all of the DVD Fab users out there I found something very interesting the other day. I have one system that is an Intel Core i7 that is using a different video card (not the onboard one) and I also have an Intel Core i5 System that IS using the onboard video. What a HUGE difference when using DVD Fab to compress video, the i7 System takes about 30% LONGER than the i5 System does and the i7 used 100% of the CPU while the i5 Uses less than 30%. The reason being is that DVD Fab is using the GPU on the i5 but can't on my i7.

I would love to use the onboard video of my i7 System but can't as I need something that will give me Dual Link DVI which isn't supported on the DVI Connection but is on the Display Port but my monitor doesn't support that.

I doubt that the onboard video is making an i5 faster than an i7; there is something else doing that. Actually, more correctly, something is making the i7 slower than the i5. And does onboard video even have an GPU, and then the equivalent of "CUDA" or "APP" to leverage it?

Sounds like the built in hardware video encoder (Quick Sync) is being used in one case but not the other. Could be that when the Intel video driver is not being used (because you have an external GPU) DVDFab is not able to use Quick Sync.

If I want to re-encode I do it with Handbrake, which can also use Quick Sync. It's much faster than the CPU and leaves the CPU mainly free to do other things at the same time.

Sounds like the built in hardware video encoder (Quick Sync) is being used in one case but not the other. Could be that when the Intel video driver is not being used (because you have an external GPU) DVDFab is not able to use Quick Sync.

If I want to re-encode I do it with Handbrake, which can also use Quick Sync. It's much faster than the CPU and leaves the CPU mainly free to do other things at the same time.

This seems to be the case, for a test I put a different video card in the Core i5 System and got the same result. Without the video card (using the on-board video) DVD Fab shows "Lighting-Recording" and "Lightning-Shrink" are enabled / checked off. With the video card installed they are grayed out.

I do the conversion on the fly to make is as simple as possible, I use DVD Fab to down-res certain movies to 720p which results in about an 8GB file and the quality in my opinion is awesome. For others (like animated) I will leave them at full res. I also need to remove / convert the DD Track to AC3 as my soundbar does not support DD at all. So as I said an all in one solution is the best way for me to go. 1 Click and 20 minutes later it is done.

...
I would love to use the onboard video of my i7 System but can't as I need something that will give me Dual Link DVI which isn't supported on the DVI Connection but is on the Display Port but my monitor doesn't support that.
...

You can use the i7 for quick sync even if it's not outputting video. Google it.

Sounds like the built in hardware video encoder (Quick Sync) is being used in one case but not the other. Could be that when the Intel video driver is not being used (because you have an external GPU) DVDFab is not able to use Quick Sync.

That is absolutely correct. You have to get rid of the external GPU for DVD Fab to use Quick Sync.

On another note, it is generally accepted in DVD Fab land that using the hardware acceleration of a GPU for encoding gives inferior results to using the software encoders.

- kelson h

The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of the low price is forgotten . . . life is too short to drink bad wine